


Did you know that the verb "to cope" came from an old French word meaning "to deliver a blow"?

by Lia404



Series: Fun Facts from the Collective Unconscious [2]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Angst with an Open Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Except it's not really death if you squint, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Mementos (Persona 5), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:07:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26255386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lia404/pseuds/Lia404
Summary: Sometimes, it’s simply a message you never got to answer—here today, gone tomorrow.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Kurusu Akira, Akechi Goro/Persona 5 Protagonist
Series: Fun Facts from the Collective Unconscious [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734037
Comments: 6
Kudos: 73
Collections: 21 plus akeshuake server events





	Did you know that the verb "to cope" came from an old French word meaning "to deliver a blow"?

**Author's Note:**

> Some stories beg to be written and this was one of them.
> 
> I am very happy that it got to be a part of the [21+ Akeshuake Discord Server Minibang](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/21_plus_akeshuake_server_events). Working with [**Ally**](https://twitter.com/allybirb), the artist who drew the amazing piece in there, was a pleasure and an honour.  
> Thanks so much, Ally, for your time and most of all for enabling me in my craving for angst! <3
> 
> This story is also a part of the [Fun Facts from the Collective Unconscious series](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1734037), a very self indulgent collection of AUs in which the Phantom Thieves find out about Shido earlier. It is not posted in any chronological order and each story can be read as a stand-alone one-shot. As I haven't completed P5R or even reached June yet, any resemblance to P5R is pure luck.

“He’s gone.”

The sentence rings, unreal, an echo bouncing between the walls of his mind, filling it up with unwanted images. He shakes his head and thoughtlessly taps on the screen of his phone, opening the message app.

“He’s gone.”

It’s like his mind doesn’t register—refuses to register. It’s like the words are foreign, despite being told in the language he’s spoken all his life.  
He scrolls, finds the conversation, it’s there, it’s here, it’s right here.  
It’s not gone, why would they say so? It’s here, it’s right here.

“Akira, please, don’t…”

Oh.  
The last message remained unanswered. He forgot about it. It was just an enquiry, asking whether he would be free to hang out. He remembers the day he received it, he was already out at Takemi’s, half conscious after a clinical trial, and he forgot about it. 

Then so many things happened, but—but it was not so long ago, after all. He can almost hear the prim-and-proper voice saying the message out loud. It’s still so clear in his mind.  Surely, if he answers now, he’ll get a message back, won’t he? The other was always so reactive. His answers came fast, sharp as his mind, with a hint of clever playfulness. Always.  


He taps the message, apologizes for missing the invitation, offers to meet another day, presses  _ send _ .

“He’s gone, Akira.”

_ Sending...  
_ The message takes a long time to send. Too long.   
He holds his breath.

“Akira, snap out of it!”

Claws dig into his calf, but he barely registers the pain, too focused on his screen where a bright red line replaces the  _ Sending _ message with a  _ Delivery failed. Recipient might be offline or have deactivated their account. Press to resend. _

It’s normal. He’s in the Metaverse. Messages don’t reach them in the Metaverse. It’s normal.

_ But why would he be in the Metaverse when the rest of the team is not there anymore? _

No, it’s fine—he always had his own agenda.

Flashes of a dark helmet, black and blue stripes, clawed gloves fill his mind. The unwanted images, again.  
His grip tightens on his phone.  
Count up to three, then try again. Maybe he’ll be out of the Metaverse by then. Maybe it’ll reach him.

“Akira, please…”

He presses  _ Retry sending _ . He holds his breath as the message is processed. He feels the claws dig deeper.  
Surely the lower leg of his trousers is ruined by now, but it doesn’t matter.

The only thing that matters is the tiny loading wheel—  
—that goes round—  
—round—  
— _ Delivery failed. Press to resend. _

The phone falls on the floor, and he falls along. He barely registers when his whole body collapses on the hardwood.  
He catches himself on his hands—his arms give way, and soon his forehead, his cheeks meet the ground. He catches a glimpse of Morgana’s white paws frantically pacing around him before he closes his eyes and finally allow the images to flood his thoughts.

The glimmer of malicious carmine eyes in the night.  
The soft, long hair flowing around a cherub face, like a halo in the spotlight, like the angel he pretended to be.  
The cold bite of teeth unveiled in a smirk.  
And worst of all, the longing voice—  


_ “I wish we had met just a few years earlier.” _

There’s a sort of cold feeling when you’re standing in a t-shirt under the rain at night, wondering where you went wrong and why your whole life is changing before your eyes as a shady man threatens you with a lawsuit.

There’s a sort of cold feeling when you’re left bruised and panting in a cell you’re not sure you will get out of alive.

And there’s just another sort of cold feeling, the one that goes even beyond the expectation of your own impending death—the one that comes when you realise something is gone for good and it’s not your home, it’s not your comfort, it’s not even your own life withering before your eyes.   
It’s something else entirely. It’s your equal.  
It’s a smile and words you don’t even know to trust anymore, but that still rang so true back then—that still ring true when browsing them on a phone—but the phone is on the ground now.

There’s the cold feeling of  _ it’s gone _ , and you’re the one left behind, powerless. The one who  _ could  _ have made a difference but ultimately  _ failed _ .

Morgana’s paws clumsily push the phone away, pressing a few buttons in doing so.

“Akira, please… It will be alright.”  
“It won’t be alright, Morgana. It’s over.”

His tone is broken, a whisper. Morgana knows nothing.

“Akira, you knew… We all knew he… that silly boy… he was...”  
“Don’t call him that.”

His voice is muffled by the ground, drowned in the water leaking from his eyes, trembling.  
He tries to stabilize it. He tries to summon his confidence back.

“He wasn’t just a silly boy. He had a name, Morgana.”

He fails to be assertive, but still manages to raise his head from the puddle of tears that started to form beneath his cheek. He blinks once, tries to focus, frowns.

“He had a name. He was Akechi Goro.”

It’s just a whisper at first, barely louder than the rain pounding on the window.  
But he repeats it.

“Akechi Goro.”

He repeats it louder  
And louder.  
As if chanting, as if trying to summon him, until he pounds his fists on the ground and screams and Morgana jumps and the phone blinks red.

“Akechi Goro!!!”

Morgana’s ears droop. He doesn’t dare say anything, just watches Akira as he throws his head back in a final, despaired wail.  
The painful yowl is only met with the answer of a mechanical voice from his phone, stern and mocking:

"No candidate found."

Akira suddenly straightens his back and grasps the phone, before violently throwing it across the room.  
_ Crash _ , goes the phone as it abruptly meets the wall.  
_ Rrrrr _ , goes Morgana as he hides beneath the bed, pupils blown in distress.  
_Bam_ , goes Akira’s body, as it collapses back on the ground, as he stops trying to repress the loud sobs that wreck it anymore.

You’re never aware of what you’ve got until it’s gone.

Sometimes, it’s simply a message you never got to answer—here today, gone tomorrow.

* * *

For all that he assures he isn’t a cat, Morgana sure has feline instincts. Sneaking past him takes a lot of effort, but as time passed, Akira learned how to convincingly fake sleep until the not-a-cat was deep in his dreams and he could tiptoe down the stairs and out into the night.

He’s used to doing it since he started slipping alone into Mementos to yell his frustration at the void: avoid the creaking step in the stairs; grab the bells at the door so they wouldn’t jingle; rush to the metro station; activate the MetaNav; go to the dead-end that has become his screaming room; shout it all out as loud as he could.

Usually, he’s exhausted the morning after, but it’s always worth it. There’s something wickedly satisfying in yelling abuse at the walls of the collective unconscious.  
Except screaming right now doesn’t feel as liberating as it should, not when the last few times he came to Mementos for this purpose, he wasn’t alone.  
A kira yells himself hoarse, but now even the rush of angry echoes around him feel empty. There’s a voice missing, the rich and angry voice of another teenager who had been dealt a terrible hand by life.

[ _ “FUCK SHIDO!” _ ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24038263)

Akira’s heart hurts so much. They should have known. They should have prepared more. They were doing so good, they thought they’d fooled him.

Overconfidence makes a team reckless.  
Once on that damn ship, faced with that cold, ugly cognitive… Goro stood no chance. The captain of the ship would not let him escape alive.

Akira faces the angry red of the room around him and suddenly feels like it’s too much. There’s a pounding in his head not unlike the sound of pounding hands on a metal wall, and the infinite scream of all beings gets drowned in the memories.

“I tried…”

He’s not screaming at the void anymore. There’s no frustration to let out, just pain, pain and that tiny flicker of something that could resemble anger, except it’s not exactly it, it’s…  
Akira’s fingers fly to his head, grasp his hair. It’s too much, the walls are closing in and he feels so  _ alone _ , like there’s a half of himself lost somewhere in the sea of whispers.

“I tried… I really…”

And really, he could have sworn he had already cried all the tears his body could produce, but there’s something with this place that still manages to wrench more from him. His knees are weak, his hands are clenching; it  _ hurts _ .

The pounding grows so loud in his head that he barely notices the faraway sound of chains in a dark corridor.  
It’s only when he’s finally out of breath, choking in the middle of a room filled with the memories of a prim-and-proper boy who _dared_ _howl at the world that he_ _deserved better_ , that the clinking reaches his ears.  
Akira freezes  
It’s way too close.  
His eyes open wide, his heart races and his body starts before his mind can catch up, fight-or-flight answer he’s been trained to have with his regular escapades.

His feet drag him in a rush to the closest safe room he can find. It’s not one he’s familiar with, not the one they used to rest after a good screaming session. This one looks abandoned, dusty, with half its seats broken and crude tags on the wall. He does not remember ever finding it, but someone else has been here before. There are still footsteps in the dust, a trail leading to a bike collapsed between mangled seats.  
Akira shudders.  
The bike is too shiny to belong in this forgotten room.

_ “So, Crow, how did you move for your alone missions into Mementos before you met us and the Monabus?”  
_ _ “I cycled.”  
_ _ “You. What. You what?”  
_ _ “I… cycled? On a bicycle?” _

So it was true after all. The bicycle was true, the mastermind was true, the help he needed was true, the threats on his life were true, Goro Akechi was a liar but not to Akira, not anymore.  
Goro Akechi told him truths, even the most ridiculous ones, like the bipedaled, shiny truth lying on the floor before him.  
The wet, nervous laughter tears at him, sudden and unexpected even to him. The absurdity of it all makes him choke—a teenager biking for blood through the depths of the collective unconscious.  
He thinks his legs are going to give out again, but the image flashes in his mind, the determined fire in the eyes of the boy despite the danger he was going through, the masks he kept changing. And all of this… what for?

Akira’s mask hides his frown, but his back snaps straight. The tears stop at once, his legs are stable again.  
He brushes a hand on his face, dries his cheeks.

The absurdity is not laughable. It’s infuriating.

_ What for? _

He feels a small fire start deep within his chest.

What had it all been for?  
A whole existence dedicated to pain and lying, only to disappear when finally,  _ finally _ , the mask was allowed to slip.

It was not fair.  
The small fire grew into a deep, blazing inferno of fury.

_ This is truly an unjust game… _

Akira grabs the bike and heads out.

The rotten air of Mementos rush past him, his coat flaps behind him. It’s not convenient, but it’s new, and somehow, he feels just as close to Goro as he had been when they’d been shouting in the red room.  
Just close enough to maybe feel what he felt, every new mission he was sent to.  
Sent for  _ blood _ .

Akira doesn’t need a navi to find his way through the place anymore. He’s learnt where to find what he’s looking for, be it items he needs to craft equipment for the team or personas he needs to increase his powers.

_ With the birth of the Justice persona... _

The Angels quiver before the cold flames in his eyes.

“Why are you doing this?”

He ignores their shrieks. He tears at their wings, rips the feathers, he feels their bones crush beneath his blows, each strike a new way to let it out. Shadows don’t shed blood, but their blinded eyes openly weep and their cries of pain wash over him, soothe the aching rage boiling in his veins.

“Join me,” he asserts and welcomes the Angels as they cower in terror within his mask, within his soul.

Archangels are tougher to break, but they come along once their armors are shred to pieces.

“You won’t bring him back this way, kid.”  
“But you still hold a piece of him, and I must have it back.”

He welcomes them all in his heart, Power, Principality and Dominion, before heading out, his feet pushing the pedals faster, following a path the bike’s owner must have followed so many times, away from the Reaper’s domain, away from the fading remnants of the other shadows he tears through to get what he’s looking for.

He can hear the chatter of the winged personas in the depths of his mind, confused, scared, furious, and most of all,  _ powerless in the grip of his soul _ .  
It’s intoxicating, satisfying the anger that burns within him.  
His determined grin devours his face.

It is with a sick, sad satisfaction that he enters the Velvet Room and barely bats an eye at Caroline’s barbs and Justine’s condescending tone.  
He knows better.

“What are you trying to achieve, inmate?”

He shrugs and keeps grinning his dangerous, sharp-toothed grin.   
Then he turns to the massive guillotines and witnesses the sacrifices of the angels.  
Stronger angels appear, harsher archangels, a whole Heaven worth of dumb humanoids with wings who claim they’re pure and wise.  
He knows better.

“I’m putting an end to the absurdity. I’m tearing Heaven down, because Heaven is a lie, and  _ he _ lies in Hell now.”

His heart greets the Throne then destroys it to welcome Uriel. His jailers are cowering now before his unusual recklessness, but he doesn’t pay them any mind.  
Instead, he pours his whole into all the gory sacrifices he demands.  
They obey.  
Even Caroline stops trying to reason him, she just pushes Uriel on the electric chair while Justine watches with resigned eyes.

Akira witnesses every second of Uriel’s agony, enjoys its struggle and the flash of light that ensues.

“I am the Voice of God, the Angel of Contracts. I will show no mercy towards humanity.”

The cold voice of Metatron only fuels the fire of his wrath.  
Akira stops grinning, his eyes cold again beneath his mask.

“I will show no mercy to those who made him believe his whole life that  _ he could be Heaven _ . I’m ending the fake Justice now. I’m releasing him from Hell. You’ll be going in his stead.”

Before Metatron can reach the inside of his mind, he already pushes him on the ground. He ties the pretentious angel, forces his head through the hole of the guillotine, watches with satisfaction as the most important angel of the hierarchy gets pinned to the dirty floor of the prison.

“Behold,  _ blessed one _ , as I call your curse upon you. Come, Arsene!”

The familiar surge of energy gives him confidence. Arsene bows and doesn’t say a word—he’s lived within Akira’s mind long enough. They both know each other, they both know what it is they  _ want _ .  
Arsene willingly takes the place he’s designed to take. Akira doesn’t wait for Caroline and Justine—he grabs a lever, then another, and it’s not totally synchronised, but he has to be the one to do it, he has to do it alone, he  _ knows... _

“No, inmate!”  
“Inmate, wait! If you do this…”

He ignores them: it’s fine, he knows, he  _ knows _ , and suddenly the anger that has been carrying him since he stepped in the safe room turns to wildness.  
He unleashes it; Caroline and Justine cower when they hear the demented laughter that erupts from his throat, as he watches the result of the failed fusion stands in the middle of the Velvet Room, bathed in a gloomy light. 

“Say my name,” the imposing voice echoes through the room, covering the usual singing of the souls.

Akira observes the massive persona which glowers over them, all black and white and comforting danger and vice.  
For the first time of the night, his lips spread into a thin, warm, satisfied smile. His own voice doesn’t falter when he answers:

“Loki.”

He welcomes the malignant persona in his heart and feels it stretch, occupy his whole mind, makes it its own place. Loki is huge and burning, he takes all the room in Akira’s soul. His presence should scorch him but amidst the cold and the pain, it is a soothing warmth instead.

Akira is done.

* * *

Akira gets out of Mementos exhausted, pushing a rusty bike beside him. The trinkle of people left in the streets at such a late time stare at the high-schooler barely standing with his battered bicycle, but they don’t dare cross his eyes and rather choose to walk on the other side of the street.

It’s late, and he looks like someone who’s been in trouble—someone who caused trouble.

They have no idea how much trouble he’s just caused.  
The destruction of Heaven sits comfortable within him. The lie is broken.

Akira is satisfied. 

He hooks the bike outside Leblanc, sneaks past Morgana and back to bed.

_ What was all that for? _ Loki asks from the inside.  
_ To find where justice ends _ , he thinks. Loki shifts at this, but does not answer.

Akira lies on the old mattress, content with the piece of the soul he gave freedom too.  
It’s a comforting presence, the final remnant of the teenager who lived his whole life in Hell.   
With the image of Loki’s last master in mind, Akira finally feels ready. 

He takes out his phone, navigates the apps despite the cracked screen, thumbs through the messages.  Then he finds the conversation.

He taps on the messages and slides to delete them, one by one, each vanishing message making his heart lighter and lighter.

He’s letting go.  
Loki stirs.

He’s almost done, he reaches the final one, the one cursed with the  _ delivery failed, press to resend _ notice.

As he goes to tap on the messages and slide to delete the last contact he ever had with the silly boy named Akechi Goro, his thumb stays a bit too long, pushes a bit too strong.

_ Resend?  
_ _ Sending… _

His breath hitches.

_ Delivered. _

He hears Loki chuckle from within.  
His voice sounds a lot like another familiar voice.

Akira’s phone falls from his hand.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the [21+ Akeshuake Discord Server Minibang](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/21_plus_akeshuake_server_events).  
> The event is still ongoing and the collection will be updated everyday, so please check out everyone's amazing work! 
> 
> And don't forget to give a follow to [Ally's](https://twitter.com/allybirb) fantastic [art](https://twitter.com/allybirb/status/1301234131859206144?s=20) on Twitter!


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